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Businesses warned to wait for Second Life opportunities

Eighty percent of businesses will have a presence in a virtual world, says a new Gartner report that otherwise heaps suspicion on the value of Second Life e-commerce.

The tech research firm advises businesses to “limit substantial financial investments until the environments stabilise and mature”.

Giants like Toyota and Adidas, as well as smaller enterprises, have all opened storefronts in Second Life in recent months as hype surrounding the 3D environment and its potential for e-commerce and marketing reached fever pitch.

Gartner said the majority of internet users and Fortune 500 companies would be inside such worlds by 2011, but analyst Steve Prentice advised caution before frippery.

“The collaborative and community-related aspects of these environments will dominate in the future, and significant transaction-based commercial opportunities will be limited to niche areas, which have yet to be clearly identified,” he said.

“Meaningful corporate use of public virtual worlds/platforms will lag considerably behind individual consumer use as enterprises struggle to develop appropriate and relevant business models.”

Prentice laid down “five laws” for those companies considering emerging into worlds like Second Life:

As a search engine marketing and social media (SMM) consultant, more firms are approaching me every week to help them develop integrated SMM strategies.

While in many ways social media is a completely different discipline to search; there are plenty of similarities when it comes to developing a strategy and many search experts are taking to social media marketing like ducks to water.

The one thing I am telling all these companies is you have to be careful as a bad SMM strategy can often do you more harm than good.

Companies are pouring billions of dollars a year into social media and influencer marketing campaigns, many of which target consumers on Facebook-owned Instagram, in an effort to parlay social engagement into sales.